


Once Upon a Time

by MsSolo



Category: High School Musical (2006 2007 2008)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-21
Updated: 2011-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 16:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsSolo/pseuds/MsSolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan freaks out about life at three AM, and Chad tells him a little story to help him get back to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time

"What if I change my mind?"

At three o'clock in the morning, Chad Danforth's brain was not equipped to deal with such non-sequitors. He blinked in the light from his cell phone, and fell back on his pillow.

"Ryan? That you?"

"What if I change my mind about drama? I don't have any other talents!"

"You're going to change your mind?"

"I might!"

Ryan sounded panicked, the way a person only could at the ridiculous hours of the night. There was a tinge of hysteria, and Chad wondered if the guy had been crying. Something in his stomach twisted at the thought, and he was forced to acknowledge that he was actually awake.

"Not during the day," Chad said.

"What if I can't do it?" Ryan pleaded. "What if I go to New York, and I'm terrible? Nerves! Injuries! I'll get old! What do I do then?"

"Teach, same as anyone," Chad said. "Choreograph. What the fuck brought this on?"

"Nothing," Ryan insisted. "I just... What if I get there, and I don't like it?"

"Get where? Don't like what?" Chad snapped. "Dude, it's three in the morning. You love dancing. You love acting and singing and all that stuff. You love teaching other people to do it. You're freaking over nothing."

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Chad waited for Ryan to hang up on him, but instead there was a noise that might have been a sniffle. A badly disguised sniffle.

"Dude, you want to do this," Chad sighed. "You're not going to change your mind. This is normal, you know? Cold Feet for Seniors. All that SATs stuff and college freaking you out. I spent a chunk of yesterday convincing Troy that it was worth pursuing basketball. _Troy_ , dude. Just go to sleep, and you'll feel better in the morning."

An undisguised sniffle.

"I've been trying to get to sleep for _hours_."

A whine, that for some reason didn't bug Chad. From anyone else it would have, but when Ryan whined Chad just wanted to hug him. He kinda wished they weren't over a mile apart right now. He rolled onto his side, wrapping himself cocoon-like into his own blankets, and imagined his friend, lying in some king size four poster bed with silk sheets and goose down pillows. Surrounded by hats.

"Once upon a time there was a-"

"What?"

Chad sighed. "You want to get to sleep. I'm telling you a bed time story."

Ryan sounded a little huffy. "I wanted you to reassure me."

"What's the point? You're too freaked to listen to reason, and when you wake up tomorrow you'll be embarrassed you ever called." Chad smiled at the phone. "So, you gonna lie back and close your eyes like a good little boy?"

"Are we sitting comfortably..." Ryan said quietly. Chad thought he could hear a smile.

"Once upon a time, there was a prince," Chad began again. "This prince was renowned for his grace and poise, for his style and class. He wore only the finest clothes, and ate only the finest food, and did only the finest yoga."

Chad heard what might have been a giggle, and reassured, he went on:

"The prince, though, was terribly lonely. He loved to dance, but he didn't have a partner. He loved to sing, but he had no one to duet with. He always felt like there was something missing.

"Now, this prince knew there was something different about himself." Chad bit his lip. Was this too close to the bone? He wasn't sure he was even meant to know. "This prince... he didn't like the princesses his parents introduced him too."

"Uh-huh?"

Ryan sounded... not sleepy, but relaxed.

"Yeah," said Chad.

"He liked the princes better?" Ryan asked. He sounded faintly amused, but his casual voice was belied by a sharp rise in tone at the end of the question, sharper than usual. And Chad was meant to be relaxing him.

"I think he might have, yes."

"Did he meet a prince?"

"Hey, stop trying to guess the ending. We're getting ahead of ourselves," Chad chided. "In fact," he said, struck by a sudden brainwave, "he met a servant girl."

"Servant boy."

"No, a servant girl. And he liked her a lot," Chad said firmly.

"But-"

"Trust me, okay? So,the prince met this serving girl, and he liked her a lot. They had the same taste in clothes and music, and probably even men. She helped him chose his clothes and danced with him and sang the soprano parts in his favourite songs. But she was a very strange serving girl, because despite her lowly birth she acted like a princess; she was bossy and snobby and really manipulative. She had her sights set on one of the knights, and she decided to use her sexual wiles to separate that knight from his friends."

"I want a fairy tale, not an allegory," Ryan complained.

"Okay, okay, too literal," Chad conceded. "Anyway, there's the prince, and there's the weirdly superior serving girl. And they get on so well, people start to wonder about them. They think the serving girl has too much power over the prince, and they think he's in love with her or something. And he kind of is, but it doesn't make him feel the way a certain one of his knights does, so he's kinda confused, and it's kinda nice to let the serving girl do some of the thinking for him."

Ryan stayed quiet, and Chad figured he's doing something right. He was kinda getting into this.

"There's this one politician, Lady, um. Lady Darbus, right? And she decides the serving girl has too much power over the prince, so she starts digging the dirt on the girl. With the help of Lord Bolton. And all this weird shit starts turning up, like she's adopted, and stuff. And they figure she's actually a spy from the foreign land of West High."

Chad expected Ryan to giggle, but he didn't.

"Dude, you asleep?" Chad asked quietly.

This did get a snort. "No, just... enthralled," Ryan whispered back. "Sharpay and I used to play make believe games like this, but I was always the long lost twin."

"No fair guessing the ending," Chad reminded him. He found he was whispering too, and resisted the urge to laugh at himself. It was kinda cool, lying in bed, in the dark, whispering to Ryan like he was a few inches away. He shivered, though he wasn't cold.

"So," he went on, still whispering, "there's this favourite knight, right? And this knight, despite the fact he doesn't really like the servant girl, doesn't think this is fair. So he does a bit of his own investigation. And, it turns out, Lady Darbus used to be this, like, midwife. The Queen's midwife. And this is a kingdom that wasn't sexist or anything, so any child could inherit. But Lady Darbus was, and thought a boy should have the throne, so she could marry her own daughter to him. And Lord Bolton totally had his own evil motives too, okay?"

"Okay," Ryan agreed. His voice was soft and husky, and Chad swallowed.

"And the knight discovers that a princess was born. At the same time as the prince. And she was hidden away with this peasant family. But he doesn't know what to do, because he doesn't really like the servant girl. Plus, Lady Darbus and Lord Bolton are always watching her, so he couldn't have told her if he wanted to.

"But he's the prince's most loyal knight, so he hangs out with the prince all of the time. He manages to get the prince alone, and he tells him what he suspects.

"And the prince is kinda relieved, because it explains all the weird feelings for the servant girl, but it also lets him off the hook. She can rule the kingdom, you see. He can just keep doing the stuff he likes, like organising court balls and making up new dances for people to dance at them. He doesn't have to marry some dumb princess just to have kids. He can hang out with the knights, and stuff."

"And the prince is so greatful for the news, he gives his favourite knight a big kiss?"

Ryan's voice was soft and sexy, though the effect was rather ruined by an audible yawn. Chad's stomach flipped, and he could almost imagine Ryan right there with him, curled up in his narrow little bed, wearing one of Chad's old sports jerseys. Hair tousled. Eyes dark and sleepy. Pale narrow legs, surprising thigh and calf muscles, bony ankles. Cold feet. Cuddled up close to Chad, to stay warm, and to stay on the bed.

"Chad?" Ryan sounded very nervous.

"The favourite knight is a little distracted," Chad struggled to say. "The favourite knight is imagining the prince in a very, um, treasonous way. Not very fashionable, either."

"The prince is imagining the favourite knight very fashionably naked," Ryan said.

"The knight is-"

Chad's phone beeped twice, and went dark. He stared at it blankly.

Battery.

Stupid. Fucking. Battery.

Chad lay on his back and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. What the hell must Ryan be thinking right now? Why the hell didn't he keep his phone better charged?

He sat up, and slid out from between the sheets, as naked as Ryan had been imagining. He grinned at his own body, evidence of how much he'd been enjoying telling the little fairy tale still obvious. His phone was lying on his pillow.

He plugged his phone in to charge (after a regretably long serach for the charger, somewhere under the general detritus of his room), and woke it up forcibly. Before he could even open the phonebook, Ryan had called.

"Battery?"

"Yeah. Stupid thing."

"So, the prince and the knight? Are they still... okay?"

"Well, yeah. The knight was totally naked, as the prince had guessed, and he was waiting for the prince to go into some detail about his own princely attire, you know?"

Ryan laughed, breathily. "The prince was wearing his royal pyjamas, but he felt bad, seeing that the poor knight was naked, so he took them off."

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before HSM3 came out, which makes Chad's line about talking Troy into doing basketball... ominous.


End file.
